The Attack On Freedom Of Speech On American University Campuses
September 21, 2016
"What is a settler? That’s the question that opens the new documentary film ' The Settlers,' which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival." - TimesOfIsrael
"This week we caught a glimpse of the advanced state of the disease in an email sent by a Syracuse University professor to an Israeli filmmaker in June." - CarolineGlick
"The cancer of Jew hatred has taken over the body of U.S. academia.
This week we caught a glimpse of the advanced state of the disease in an email sent by a Syracuse University professor to an Israeli filmmaker in June.
As The Atlantic reported, on June 24, Syracuse professor Gail Hamner disinvited Israeli filmmaker Shimon Dotan from screening his film at the university’s film festival, scheduled for March 2017.
. . . that the BDS faction on campus will make matters very unpleasant for you and for me if you come.'
"New York Governor Andrew Cuomo says his state will boycott any group that backs the BDS movement. BDS, which stands for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, advocates for Palestinian human rights and opposes the illegal Israeli occupation. But is he really boycotting free speech?" - AJ+
Hamner’s decision had nothing to do with the quality of Dotan’s work. She admitted as much, writing, 'Obviously, my decision here has nothing to do with you or your work.'
Dotan was disinvited because he is Israeli and because the title of his film, The Settlers, does not make it immediately apparent whether he reviles the half million Israeli Jews who live in Judea and Samaria sufficiently.
Hamner explained, 'My SU colleagues, on hearing about my attempt to secure your presentation [at our upcoming film festival], have warned me that the BDS faction on campus will make matters very unpleasant for you and for me if you come.'
. . . (BDS) activists have enmeshed Jew hatred into the fabric of academic life in America.
She then elaborated on the harm his participation would cause her, personally.
'My film colleague... who granted me affiliated faculty [status] in the film and screen studies program and who supported my proposal to the Humanities Council for this conference, told me point blank that if I have not myself seen your film and cannot myself vouch for it to the council, I will lose credibility with a number of film and women/ gender studies colleagues. Sadly, I have not had the chance to see your film and can only vouch for it through my friend and through published reviews.'
Hamner added, 'I feel caught in an ideological matrix and by my own egoic needs to sustain certain institutional affiliations.'
Hamner’s letter to Dotan provides us with a rare opportunity to see something that people generally go to great lengths to hide. Hamner demonstrated how boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) activists have enmeshed Jew hatred into the fabric of academic life in America.
They bully faculty, administrators and students into becoming anti-Semitic by harassing, ostracizing and persecuting everyone who refuses to actively promote Jew hatred.
The BDS movement is qualitatively different from all other groups that operate on campuses today.
Unlike even the most radical, fringe groups, the BDS movement isn’t seeking to advance or protect the rights of anyone. All it works to accomplish is the obliteration of Jewish rights, and indeed of Jewish existence in Israel.
Like Hamas and Iran, BDS activists seek the annihilation of the Jewish state. Like Hamas and Iran, the BDS movement does not strive to bring peace or to protect the rights of anyone. Rather, like Iran and Hamas, the goal of the BDS movement is the genocide of the largest Jewish population in the world and the annihilation of the only Jewish state in the world.
Bullying is the BDS movement’s preferred tactic.
They bully faculty, administrators and students into becoming anti-Semitic by harassing, ostracizing and persecuting everyone who refuses to actively promote Jew hatred.
In a letter to UCLA chancellor Gene Block, Chatterjee explained that his decision was the result of relentless attacks, harassment and bullying he has suffered at the hands of BDS activists and their enablers in Block’s administration.
To force everyone into line, BDS groups have adopted two complementary tactics. First, they try to banish Israeli Jews entirely from their campuses by bullying their institutions into adopting and implementing anti-Israel boycotts.
Second, they enforce partial bans on Israeli Jews by requiring Israeli and non-Israeli Jews to behave in manners no one would never think of requiring of Israeli Arabs, or Italians or Japanese for that matter.
BDS activists achieve both aims by bullying non-activists into enforcing their anti-Semitic positions – as Hamner did when she disinvited Dotan.
These actions are a clear violation not only of the civil rights of Israeli and non-Israeli Jews. They are also an indisputable violation of the civil rights of all students, administrators and faculty at US universities. They deny everyone the right to hear viewpoints and receive knowledge from Israeli Jews and so limit the academic freedom of everyone.
BDS is a postmodern version of the pure, unrefined Jew hatred of Medieval Europe. Five hundred years ago, the only Jews permitted to enter the public square were Christians. Jews were rejected, ostracized, expelled and killed unless they could enthusiastically and soulfully recite the catechisms.
On university campuses throughout the US today, Jews – Israeli and non-Israeli – are ostracized, silenced, harassed and humiliated unless they enthusiastically, soulfully and contritely declare their support for the annihilation of the Jewish state.
Non-Jews who do not require them to do so are similarly ostracized and otherwise punished.
For nearly eight years, US President Barack Obama’s Justice Department has refused to investigate the flagrant civil rights violations carried out by BDS activists, groups and their faculty and administration allies and enablers.
Case in point is the fate of Milan Chatterjee.
Chatterjee is an Indian-American law student and a Hindu. Last year he was elected president of UCLA’s Graduate Students’ Association. Last week he announced his resignation from the post and his transfer to New York University Law School to complete his degree.
In a letter to UCLA chancellor Gene Block, Chatterjee explained that his decision was the result of relentless attacks, harassment and bullying he has suffered at the hands of BDS activists and their enablers in Block’s administration.
Chatterjee wrote Block: 'Your administration has not only allowed BDS organizations and student activists to freely engage in intimidation of students who do not support the BDS agenda, but has decided to affirmatively engage in discriminatory practices of its own against those same students.
'Whether you choose to acknowledge it or not, the fact is that the UCLA campus has become a hostile and unsafe environment for students, Jewish students and non-Jewish, who choose not to support the BDS movement, let alone support the State of Israel.'
We can expect Israeli Jews to be shunned to greater and greater degrees and for pro-Israel students, faculty and administrators – Jewish and non-Jewish – to become less and less free to voice their views.
Chatterjee got on the wrong side of UCLA’s anti-Semitism enforcers in November 2015 when he adopted a student government policy of strict neutrality on BDS.
Under his leadership, the graduate council would neither support nor oppose BDS. To this end, he allocated funds for a “Diversity Caucus,” with the stipulation that the caucus remain neutral on BDS.
It was for his refusal to actively endorse BDS – rather than any action to oppose BDS – that Chatterjee became a target for the BDS mob. They submitted a bid to impeach him based on frivolous claims.
To its shame, rather than stand by Chatterjee, the administration joined the mob. Chatterjee was censured by the university and subjected to disciplinary proceedings. UCLA’s administration claimed that he had 'violated university policy' for refusing to fund BDS groups.
Following Chatterjee’s decision to transfer to NYU, Kenneth Marcus, president of the Louis Brandeis Center, which supported Chatterjee throughout his year of anti-Semitic persecution, issued a statement. Marcus noted, 'It is disgraceful that anti-Israel extremists have managed to drive out this courageous and conscientious student leader for failing to capitulate to the demands of the anti-Semitic BDS movement. The Milan Chatterjee affair reflects the insidiousness of the anti-Israel movement’s new strategy, which is to suppress pro-Israel advocacy and intimidate not only Jewish pro-Israel students but anyone who remains neutral.'
Back at Syracuse, the ironic aspect of Hamner’s disinvitation of Dotan is that Dotan actually recites the catechism both personally and in his film. His only mistake was that he failed to make his convictions clear in the title of his movie.
The university administration was embarrassed by the publication of Hamner’s statement. As a result, last Friday Syracuse University provost Michelle Wheatley issued a mass email stating that Dotan had been reinvited to the conference and that Hamner had apologized for her letter.
The most notable aspect of Wheatley’s letter is that it contained no commitment to investigate her allegations of anti-Semitic intimidation on the part of faculty and student BDS goons. It contained no commitment to purge bigoted intimidation from campus or invite Israelis with Zionist views to speak at Syracuse or participate in university events. It contained no mention of any plans to discipline Hamner for engaging in bigoted actions.
Rather, it simply reinvited Dotan, whose anti-Israel credentials were belatedly sorted out.
For nearly eight years, US President Barack Obama’s Justice Department has refused to investigate the flagrant civil rights violations carried out by BDS activists, groups and their faculty and administration allies and enablers. So there is no reason to think that any federal investigation will be conducted any time soon.
Rather, we can expect anti-Jewish prejudice to become ever stronger and more brazen. We can expect Israeli Jews to be shunned to greater and greater degrees and for pro-Israel students, faculty and administrators – Jewish and non-Jewish – to become less and less free to voice their views.
And we can expect the US higher education system to speed up its slide into moral dystopia and intellectual corruption."
"'The Settlers': New Film Reveals History & Consequences of Israeli Settlements on Palestinian Land." - DemocracyNow
"We examine the history and consequences of decades of Israeli settlement construction on Palestinian lands in an interview with Shimon Dotan, the director of an extraordinary new film, 'The Settlers,' which just had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. 'It is such a heated and often discussed topic, but I find that so little is known about it, and often the discussion is misinformed,' Dotan says."- DemocracyNow
University Campus BDS Defined; Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions: The Global Campaign To Delegitimize Israel- TheADL
. . . Or in other words the same as a Saul Alinsky Power Point from a different era, Alinsky a socialist hero to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton - Webmaster
Rule 12: Pick The Target, Freeze It, Personalize It, And Polarize It:
"Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)" - TheBestOfBeck
Republicans, including John McCain, approving ACLU Executive Ruth Bader Ginsburg onto the Supreme Court in 1993 via nomination by Bill Clinton, lead us to this day two decades later. - Webmaster
"Gender expression is part of care for the whole person, university spokeswoman says."
"At Loyola University-Chicago, a Jesuit Catholic school, students in the 'Christian Life Communities' are able to pick whatever gender they please, according to a sign up form created by Campus Ministry for interested students.
"There are dozens of 'genders' to choose from, according to today’s social norms, including genderqueer, genderfluid, neutrois, agender, two-spirit and hijra."
Christian Life Communities are groups of students at Loyola who meet to discuss faith and God; they 'are based around three pillars: spirituality, community, and mission,' according to the Campus Ministry website. Some CLCs include a Women’s CLC, a Men’s CLC, an LGBTQ, and a Rugby one.
Students do not have to conform to traditional Catholic teaching on gender, which is that there are only two, male and female. According to the Google response form for the CLCs, student aren’t limited to binary options, and can fill in whatever gender they want.
There are dozens of 'genders' to choose from, according to today’s social norms, including genderqueer, genderfluid, neutrois, agender, two-spirit and hijra.
When asked for more information on why the university is in apparent conflict with Church teaching by recognizing more than two genders, Lisa Reiter, director of campus ministry, claimed that while the Church recognizes only male and female, it’s part of cura personalis, that is the 'care for the whole person,' to let students express their own gender identity.
Cura personalis is often used at Jesuit institutions, such as universities and hospitals, to talk about taking care of the entire person.
"The university is no stranger to pushing an LGBT agenda. It annually hosts a drag show, a queer prom, and last year invited Laverne Cox to speak, a transgender actress, of Orange is the New Black fame."
In response to a question about whether or not campus ministry is going against church teaching on genders, Reiter wrote: 'You are correct that the Catholic church teaching affirms that God created humans as men and women. That teaching is affirmed in the Catechism … [but] students are not required to ascribe to the above teaching in order to participate in Campus Ministry activities.'
'The form includes gender identity along with many other biographical questions so that Campus Ministry staff members can exercise ‘cura personalis,’ the care of the whole person, to each and every student who wants to explore and deepen their relationship to God and to the Church,' Reiter told The Fix.
Reiter did not respond to a follow-up question on if the Christian Life Communities would try to lead students toward the true understanding of gender.
The university is no stranger to pushing an LGBT agenda. It annually hosts a drag show, a queer prom, and last year invited Laverne Cox to speak, a transgender actress, of Orange is the New Black fame.
But Pope Francis, a former Jesuit himself, strongly denounced transgenderism as 'annihilation of man as image of God,' according to Daily Wire."
Obama Administration Says You’re "Racist And Intolerant" If You Believe In Religious Freedom.
Article by Micaiah Bilger, September 20, 2016, LifeNews
"The Obama Administration released a concerning new report this month with recommendations that would chip away at Americans’ religious liberty.
The lengthy new report came from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Called 'Peace Coexistence: Reconciling Nondiscrimination Principles with Civil Liberties,' the report makes recommendations that it says would balance religious freedom with non-discrimination laws.
However, the recommendations appear to be thinly veiled attempts to deny Americans’ their First Amendment right to religious freedom.
Commission Chairman Julian Castro wrote some very hostile words in his personal statement in the report:
'The phrases ‘religious liberty’ and ‘religious freedom’ will stand for nothing except hypocrisy so long as they remain code words for discrimination, intolerance, racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia or any form of intolerance. … today, as in past, religion is being used as both a weapon and a shield by those seeking to deny others equality. In our nation’s past religion has been used to justify slavery and later, Jim Crow laws.'
The report recommended that law and policy makers tailor religious exceptions 'as narrowly' as possible, citing the 'undue burden' that these exceptions place on 'non discrimination law and policies.'
"Religious leaders already are speaking out against the Obama Administration and the report’s hostile words toward religious people. Catholic Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore said he was 'shocked' by the new report, CNS reports. He called Chairman Castro’s comments 'reckless' and ignorant."
Another recommendation states: 'Federal legislation should be considered to clarify that RFRA [the Religious Freedom Restoration Act] creates First Amendment Free Exercise Clause rights only for individuals and religious institutions and only to the extent that they do not unduly burden civil liberties and civil rights protections against status-based discrimination.'
The commission recommends that states with RFRA-style laws do the same.
But by doing so, Americans’ First Amendment religious freedoms could be severely limited. The recommendations could force family-owned businesses like Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood and religious employers like the Little Sisters of the Poor to violate their religious beliefs by paying for abortion-causing drugs and possibly even abortions in their employee health plans.
In the name of non-discrimination, these recommendations essentially would allow for discrimination against religious individuals and groups.
Religious leaders already are speaking out against the Obama Administration and the report’s hostile words toward religious people. Catholic Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore said he was 'shocked' by the new report, CNS reports. He called Chairman Castro’s comments 'reckless' and ignorant.
"But when the federal government declares ideas that everyone held until five minutes ago, supported by reason and lived out with compassion, as de facto hateful and criminal ('first they came for the photographers and bakers…'), then the government is essentially creating a new public faith and forcing everyone to adhere to it."
'He makes the shocking suggestion that Catholic, evangelical, orthodox Jewish, Mormon, and Muslim communities are comparable to fringe segregationists from the civil rights era,' the archbishop continued. 'Can we imagine the civil rights movement without Rev. Martin Luther King, Fr. Theodore Hesburgh, and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel?'
Lori said such attacks on religious groups will hurt the poor and vulnerable, such as those helped by religious organizations across the country. Chairman Castro and his friends won’t be the ones to suffer, the archbishop said.
'The vast majority of those who speak up for religious liberty are merely asking for the freedom to serve others as our faith asks of us,' he continued. 'We ask that the work of our institutions be carried out by people who believe in our mission and respect a Christian witness.'
The First Amendment prohibits the government from establishing a religion. But when the federal government declares ideas that everyone held until five minutes ago, supported by reason and lived out with compassion, as de facto hateful and criminal ('first they came for the photographers and bakers…'), then the government is essentially creating a new public faith and forcing everyone to adhere to it.
The current administration’s hostility toward Christianity is clear, and Christians must be prepared to face it.
Above article by Micaiah Bilger, September 20, 2016, LifeNews
